Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. George Orwell

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. Albert Einstein

Because men really respect only that which was founded of old and has developed slowly, he who wants to live on after his death must take care not only of his posterity but even more of his past. Friedrich Nietzsche

The past is all holy to us; the dead are all holy; even they that were wicked when alive. Thomas Carlyle

Study the past if you would divine the future. Confucius

Therefore Agathon rightly says: “Of this alone even God is deprived, the power of making things that are past never to have been.” Aristotle

The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends. Max Beerbohm

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause. Henri Louis Bergson

Not heaven itself upon the past has power/But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour. John Dryden

Oh! the good times when we were so unhappy. Alexandre Dumas (the elder)

Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causes you to bump into people not going your way. Edna Ferber

With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame. George Eliot